The other night I attended a networking event at my former highschool–Emma Willard School. A friend of mine was speaking, and I thought it might be fun to head over for a bit. I haven’t visited many times since I graduated in 2000, and I haven’t always been the best at keeping up with my classmates. Even so, I found myself struck by how much at home I still feel at my former school.
It isn’t the place itself so much as the spirit of the women who are educated there that brought me that homey feeling. I went to school with a bunch of girls who were all curious, independent, assertive, and passionate. And we seem to have grown up into adults who define our success on our own terms–not only by our careers, but also by our commitment to our communities, by speaking up for what we think is right, by pursuing the things that make us happy.
I’m sure you, dear reader, would never imagine this about me, but I have always been sort of loud. I have always talked too much, always been overly honest. I have always had an opinion…and if in any particular situation I didn’t, I’d be likely to make one up for fun. And I have spent a lot of my life feeling bad about that in one way or another…I have tried to change, but I have never quite mastered any way to make myself different.
I know that being at Emma as a teenager helped give me the tools to make these parts of my personality work better for me… to embrace the bossiness as leadership, the over-sharing as radical honesty, and the wordiness as passion. These tools have been especially helpful since having Esmé. There have been so many times that I have had to speak up for her, even when it wasn’t easy. There have been so many times that I have had to form an opinion about her care quickly with limited information–and then reassess as more information surfaced. There have been so many times that my willingness to share information about our life with Esmé has yielded amazing opportunities.
As I sat in Lyon Remington the other night, sipping wine and watching my friend Alexis speak, I was so proud to be an Emma girl, so happy that I was given this tremendous gift.
At the same timeI felt completely overcome by sadness, because I cannot imagine my own daughter grasping for her dreams in the ways I have been able to.
In my efforts to constantly focus on Esmé’s present–moment by moment, day by day–I suppose I am able to exist in a state of denial about her potential futures. Or, perhaps more precisely, I am able to avoid thinking about the futures that may be denied to her by virtue of her health, her intellectual potential, her physical ability, and her emotional stability.
But, every once in awhile it floods in…like a wave the size of a building.
When I was 15 and just starting at Emma I read Jane Eyre, wrote pages and pages of poetry, fell in love for the first time, and started swearing with ease…I felt as though the whole world was mine to explore.
It was. In so many ways, it was.
And I guess on some level I have always expected to someday see my daughter experience these things…or some familiar form of them…watching as she becomes more worldly and independent.
To the best of my memory, I had never specifically thought of my daughter attending Emma Willard someday–at least not more than in passing. However, there must have been some thought somewhere, based on the dizzying feeling that flooded through me in that room watching the parents of Emma girls, the teachers, the graduates…it was a sort of immediate loss, that so many of the passions in my life might be inaccessible to her.
I know, no matter what, that she will have her own passions to pursue, whatever they may be…and I know, no matter what, it will be my job to help her reach for those passions, however unfamiliar and extraordinary they may be.
But still…I just wish I could give her the world, the way it was given to me.